The Memory Trap (2 page)

‘Sit down, David.’

Audley sat down—only to discover that the chairs in this particular VIP safe-room were somewhat lower and very much softer than he expected, so that for a moment he felt that he was never going to stop sitting down until he reached the floor. ‘Ah—yes, Jack?’

Butler had seated himself without difficulty. ‘You are here because I made a grave error of judgement,’ he said simply. ‘As a result of which we have lost someone.’

Audley’s brain went into over-drive. Taking responsibility for mistakes had never been one of Jack Butler’s problems: he had been taking it for upwards of forty years, ever since he had first sewn his lance-corporal’s single stripe on to his battle-dress blouse. But losing someone was always unsettling, and all the more so in these somewhat less violent days.

‘Who’s dead?’ It came out brutally before he could stop it, as the possible names of those at risk presented themselves—names, faces and next-of-kin.

‘No one you know.’ Butler drew a single breath. ‘But it should have been you, David.’

‘Me?’ Taken together with that “error of judgement” that had all the makings of a sick little joke. But Butler had never been a man for jokes, sick or otherwise. And he certainly wasn’t joking now. ‘What d’you mean—me?’

‘Jaggard asked us to make a contact with someone from the other side.’ Coming straight to the point was more Butler’s style. ‘From the Arbatskaya Ploshchad.’

‘From—?’ That was even more precisely from “the other side”: it was from the other side of the Kremlin—not the KGB side (from which, in the Dark Ages, orders to kill had so often emanated), but the GRU … which, in the present climate, was even more surprising. ‘From military intelligence, Jack?’ But then, coming from anywhere over there at this moment, it was not so much
surprising as
—
what? Astonishing
—
?
Outrageous? The
synonyms shunted each other almost violently enough to de-rail his train of thought, leaving him finally with
incomprehensible
for choice. ‘But—for Christ’s sake, Jack!—what—?’ Only then he realized that “What am I supposed to have done?” was redundant: Jack Butler knew as well as he did that neither his Washington activities nor any others in which he had recently been involved could remotely be tagged even as annoying to the Russians, let alone dangerous. ‘What sort of contact?’

‘A defection.’ Butler was ready for him.

Well …
yes
, thought Audley, relaxing slightly. Defections were certainly on the cards these days: ever since the winds of change had started to blow through the Soviet Union and its satellites the possibility of picking up a useful defector or two had been widely canvassed. He had even written a paper on that very subject for the use of station commanders. But that had been all of eighteen months ago, in the early days
oiglosnost
and
perestroika
. And, in any case—but the hell with that!

‘Why us, though? Jaggard knows we’re not usually into field-work. And, come to that, he doesn’t even like us to be, anyway.’

‘Yes.’ In the matter of the duties and scope of the Department of Intelligence Research and Development, Jack Butler was at one with Henry Jaggard, however much they disagreed on other matters. ‘But, in this case, the defector asked for us.’ He sighed. ‘Or, to be exact, he asked for
you
, David. By name.’

It
had
been that damned defection paper, thought Audley wrathfully: it had carried a routine follow-up request, for those who wanted more information or who had information to give, so that he could up-date it subsequently; and anyone with an ounce of knowledge could have traced it back to him from its style and content; so some imperial idiot down the line had been careless with it, and it had fetched up on someone
’
s desk at GRU headquarters.

‘His name was Kulik.’ Butler returned to his point. ‘Oleg Filipovitch Kulik.’

Kulik
—
Then the past tense registered. ‘Oleg Filipovitch Kulik …
deceased
, I take it?’

Butler nodded.

‘Kulik?’ That wasn’t so very surprising, because defecting was a high-risk enterprise, as Oleg Filipovitch must have known. However, what Butler was expecting was that he would now pick that name out of the memory-bank. But the only
Kulik
he could recall from the paying-in slips of thirty years was a third-rate Red Army general who had never been close to military intelligence (but rather, from his long and disastrous career, the opposite); and who, in any case, must be long-since dead.

‘Yes?’ Butler looked at him expectantly.

‘Never heard of him. What was he offering?’

‘He didn’t say. He merely said that it was of the highest importance.’ Butler stopped there, compressing his lips.

‘And?’ Audley recognized the sign. Beneath that worrying apology and the customary politeness, Sir Jack Butler was incandescent with that special red-headed rage which always smouldered within him, but which he never failed to control no matter what the provocation.
Hot heart, cool head
, as old Fred had been so fond of saying: Butler was the sort of man he had liked best of all.

‘They’re not sure that he was GRU.’ Butler released his lips. ‘But they think there was a man named Kulik in their computer records department, liaising with KGB Central Records. Only, since they aren’t sure about the value of what he was offering they’re not prepared to be certain.’

‘They’ were Jaggard’s Moscow contacts presumably. And in this instance they were quite right. Because if Kulik’s lost goodies were peanuts it wasn’t worth risking their necks for him. But if the goodies really had been dynamite, then Kulik’s bosses would be just waiting to pounce on whoever started to ask questions about him now.

But now, also, he was beginning to see the shape of the game, even though the ball was hidden under the usual ruck of disorderly, bloody-minded, dirty-playing players who knew that the referee was hovering near, whistle-in-mouth. ‘So we know sod-all about him really—right?’

‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’ Butler looked as though he was about to pull rank. With reluctance, of course (and especially with Audley, who had once been his superior officer; but with Kulik dead and thirty-minus-minutes at his back and a plane somewhere on the tarmac out there, if it had to be pulled, then he would pull it). ‘They’re working on him now.’

‘I’ll bet they are.’ Audley knew he would loyally do whatever Jack Butler wanted him to do. Because that was the way he felt about Butler, in spite of all appearances to the contrary: in an uncertain world, Butler had somehow become his sheet-anchor over the years, much to his own surprise. Only, in the meantime, he was going to have his pound of flesh, with or without blood. ‘But all they know as of now is that Kulik wanted me. And now he’s dead—?’ Flesh with blood, he decided. ‘And, of course, you didn’t offer me up for the slaughter … Was that the “error of judgement”, Jack? Because, if it was, then I forgive you for it—‘ He refused to quail before Butler’s displeasure ‘—was that the way it was, Jack?’

Butler looked at his watch. ‘The way it was … was that I didn’t think I could get you back quickly enough from Washington.’ He looked up again. ‘Besides which, Jaggard said it was just a routine pick-up.’

There was no such thing as a routine pick-up. ‘So you smelt a rat, did you?’

‘No. That was what Jaggard said. And I had no reason to disbelieve him.’

‘No?’ No excuses, of course. Where others would be looking to avoid blame, if not actually seeking credit for prescience when things went wrong, Jack Butler was accustomed to tell it how it was. ‘But Kulik did actually ask for me, you say. So what form did this request take? What did he want us to do?’

‘The message was passed at an embassy reception for one of our trade delegations. Low-grade technology—factory robotics for car production. And he didn’t really ask us to do anything. He just wanted to be met—by you, David.’ Butler pursed his lips. ‘It was your name that sparked Jaggard’s Moscow colleagues. They’d never heard of Kulik. But they had heard of you.’

‘Where did he want to be met?’ Audley brushed aside such doubtful fame.

‘In West Berlin.’

‘In West Berlin—‘

‘That’s right. He was getting himself across. He said that he had something of the highest importance. He gave his name. And he named the place and date and time of the meeting. Just that—nothing else. Except he wanted you to meet him.’

Too bloody simple by half
! ‘Where was the place?’

‘A restaurant beside one of the lakes. Well inside the city—nowhere near any crossing. And Jaggard said he’d have the place properly covered, so he didn’t reckon on any complications.’

Audley felt the minutes ticking away. Maybe that “too-bloody-simple” had been hindsight. Because it did look reasonably simple, if not routine: Kulik himself had been doing all the risky work, and had in effect offered himself on a plate in the restaurant, free of charge and without advance bargaining. So, really, anyone could have picked the man up, since he had nowhere to go except further westwards after having come so far already.

Then a cold hand touched him between the shoulder-blades as he found himself thinking that, although anyone could have gone, he would actually have fancied a nice easy trip to Berlin, to meet someone who wanted to meet him. He’d always liked Berlin, even in the bad old days.

‘And … Jaggard didn’t mind, when you refused to supply me?’ It occurred to him as he spoke that Henry Jaggard
might
have smelt a rat. In which case, if things went wrong, Jack Butler’s intransigence could be blamed.

‘I promised to produce you in due course, when they’d got Kulik back here.’

‘Uh-huh.’ He sensed that something was inhibiting Butler now. And it could be that, even if he hadn’t smelt that rat, Butler might well have smelt Henry Jaggard’s calculations, even though he would have despised them.

‘Yes … Well, I thought it might be as well for us to have a representative there, David.’ Butler scowled honestly. ‘Just in case Kulik really wanted to deal with Research and Development, not with anyone else.’

The cold hand touched Audley again. But then he remembered gratefully that Butler had already reassured him about the casualty list. ‘A very proper precaution, Jack!’

All the same, the coldness was still there, even while he grinned proper curiosity at Butler by way of encouragement. Because, with Kulik deceased (and no matter how frustrating that certainly was), there was nothing much anyone could do now. And yet here was Sir Jack Butler at Heathrow, like the mountain come to Mahomet. ‘So who did you send, then?’

‘I sent Miss Loftus.’

‘Oh yes?’ In matters of intelligence research, Elizabeth was razor-sharp. But her field experience was necessarily limited by her length of service. ‘A good choice.’ And, on the face of it, that was what it must have seemed to be—for Henry Jaggard’s “routine pick-up”. Only from the granite-faced look of Mount Butler now, it evidently hadn’t been. ‘She’s okay, is she, Jack?’

‘Yes—‘ The VIP cordless phone on the low table beside Butler began to buzz, cutting him off but not startling him. ‘Hullo?’

Audley took refuge in the echo of that reassuring “yes” for a moment as Butler stared through him while receiving his phone-message. Then the departure/arrival flight monitors on the wall behind caught his attention. They gave him a choice of Stockholm, Athens, Naples or Madrid, but not Berlin, or even Frankfurt—there were no immediate German destinations at all, in fact.

‘Thank you.’ Butler replaced the receiver.

It was just possible that they’d chartered a plane just for him, decided Audley, permutating the scheduled alternatives in order of possibility and then rejecting them all as unlikely. But then, since old Jack was quite notoriously tight-fisted with his Queen’s revenue, a chartered plane was either out-of-character or another disturbing indication of extreme urgency.

Butler nodded at him. ‘Your flight’s on schedule, David. They’re boarding now.’

Audley’s eye was drawn to the monitor. If it was one of, those, then it would be Stockholm, with a Berlin connection, the boarding warnings suggested. All the rest were too far away to make sense, so far as that was possible. ‘You said Kulik was heading for West Berlin. How far did he actually get?’

‘He got to the restaurant. He was killed there.’

‘Christ!’ Audley began to make connections. There was a Catch-22 about old-fashioned field experience, rather like fighter-pilot’s combat-time: the more you had, the safer you were. But that meant surviving to become safer. ‘So Elizabeth was on the spot, you mean—was she?’

‘Very much on the spot.’ Butler bit on his own bullet. ‘Kulik wasn’t the only one killed in the restaurant. Jaggard kept his word—he arranged for an escort from Berlin station, to look after her. And the West Germans had the place properly staked out—the
Verfassungsschutz
special squad was covering every exit. All the liaison procedures were observed: Jaggard played it by the book.’

Audley nearly repeated his previous blasphemy. ‘Who else was killed?’

‘Our Berlin station man.’ Butler shook his head. ‘You don’t know him, David. But … he was killed alongside her, anyway.’

Some “routine pick-up”! ‘And what the hell was the
Verfassungsschutz
doing—?’ What made it worse was that the special squad was good—not to mention well-armed. ‘Enjoying their lunch?’

‘They killed the assassin. He only got off two shots: one for Kulik and one for our man.’ Butler shook his head again. ‘It’s no good blaming the Germans, David. But I’m not going into any of the detail now. Miss Loftus will put you into the picture soon enough.’

‘Oh yes?’ What made it worst of all was that it didn’t fit properly—in fact, it didn’t damn-well fit at all at this moment. But that had to wait, with the way Butler was looking at him. ‘So now I go to Berlin to clear up the mess, do I?’ He frowned at the departures monitor. The Stockholm boarding warning had gone off, and the remaining destinations were incomprehensible. ‘Or—what?’